Dear Reader,

It’s Sunday, and I’m doing two posts this weekend.

After last night’s pork belly and noodles, I thought I’d use the same template and replace the pork with lamb and the noodles with rice.

Today was pretty good. After sleeping in (about 5 am), I jumped out of bed and got dressed for a walk. Then I discovered it was raining steadily, so instead, I did some bible reading and praying.

Zoom church was pretty good. Because it’s the fifth Sunday of the month, we had a guest preacher. She’s a chaplain in the Australian Defence Force Academy. We are currently dissecting the Apostles Creed, and Merryn spoke about our belief in the Holy Spirit.

After a couple of work Webex meetings, I watched Battlebots on Netflix. A friend I used to work with knows my favourite animal is the Orca and hers is the Eagle. Via text messaging, we speculated on an Orca bot and an Eagle bot. Can you imagine mighty jaws to crush an opponent and a powerful tail to slap down opponent bots and to flip up on the upswing? A flying drone Eagle bot would be awesome with strong, sharp talons and a powerful beak to pierce armour.

I used a pressure cooker to cook the lamb. You could also use a slow cooker.

Ingredients

• Lamb forequarter pieces (2)
• Star anise (1 star)
• Black whole peppercorns (1 tablespoon)
• White Onion (1)
• Vegetable stock (1 cup)
• Sweet sherry (1 cup)
• Barbecue sauce (1 vigorous squirt)
• Chinese five-spice (1 tablespoon)
• Bay leaves (2 or 3 leaves)
• Potato (1 cut in half)
• Capsicum (I used yellow, green, and red capsicum for colour)
• 90-second microwave rice
• Neutral oil (I used rice bran oil)
• Flour

Instructions

1. Flour the meat and brown it in a hot skillet.
2. Place the meat into the pressure cooker vessel.
3. Peel the onion, cut it along a sagittal plane, and cut each half again along a sagittal plane. Separate the layers and put them into the pressure cooker vessel.
4. Add the star anise, peppercorns, sherry, stock, barbecue sauce, Chinese five-spice, bay leaves, and potato to the meat and onion.
5. Inspect the lid of your pressure cooker to make sure the gasket is in place. If you don’t clean as you cook, look for foreign debris and remove it. The point of this step is to avoid a pressure leak. The other reason is to prevent a potentially fatal outcome if the escape valve is blocked and the pressure cooker becomes a bomb. Check out what happened at the Boston Marathon a few years ago when a pressure cooker bomb exploded. The carnage was extensive. Don’t be put off by this advice. Pressure cookers are safe if you maintain them correctly.
6. Put the lid on and seal it closed.
7. Turn on the heat, achieve cooking pressure, and cook for between 40 and 45 minutes.
8. Allow the pressure to equilibrium to atmospheric pressure.
9. Remove the lid.
10. Pick out the lamb and potato with tongs. You could use your fingers, but I reckon you’ll burn the skin, and the pain will be most unpleasant.
11. Strain the liquor to remove the solid material. Yes, liquor is the correct word. If you doubt me, look up a good English language dictionary.
12. Pour the liquor into a small container and keep it in the refrigerator to reuse or grow fungus, whatever happens first.
13. Cook the rice using microwave radiation according to the instructions for use on the packet.
14. Heat a wok or a skillet and add some neutral oil. Heat the oil until it’s near its smoking point, and then add in the rice and the slices of capsicum.
15. Stir fry the rice and capsicum until the rice starts to take on some colour.
16. The rice should have changed from limp to firm, and the capsicum should have changed from firm to a little soft but not limp. You don’t want limp capsicum, and you certainly do not desire capsicum, which has lost its vibrancy.
17. Move the fried rice and capsicum to a shallow bowl, and with cooking forceps (or fingers), take the capsicum and bring it to the top of the rice to show it off better.
18. Add the lamb to finish the presentation.
19. Thank God for wages to buy food, and thank Him for the skills to prepare and cook food.

Final thoughts

• Do you like Battlebots?
• What sort of Battlebot would you build and why?

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